


Short of a Marble

by dread_thehalfhanded



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Except we're all dumb here, Love Confessions, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Show!Geralt, Show!Jaskier, The Witcher Netflix - Freeform, no thoughts head empty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26936302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dread_thehalfhanded/pseuds/dread_thehalfhanded
Summary: Jaskier tells Geralt how he feels, but words mean different things to different people. It is predictably awkward.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 10
Kudos: 94





	Short of a Marble

_Wet. Dark earth. Blood spattered, butcher’s block. Wheat ripe on the stalk, so much—ripe, autumn-heavy, stretching out to the horizon in unbroken waves._

The scents woke him before he opened his eyes, wrapped in his own cloak under the spreading leaves of a great sycamore tree. He sniffed, against the water dripping down onto his nose, and peered out from under the hood at his dead fire. A light rain had come in the night, not enough to wake him or to disturb even Roach, who hated thunder. She had nibbled peacefully through it, and even now snuffled through the moist grass without so much as looking at him.

Sighing, Geralt sat up and wiped the light dampness from his face.

Just before dawn now, the cold grey air nipped at his bones, and he took a moment to listen to the soft noises of the creeping world. Some small creature stirred quite close in the brush to his left—rabbit, likely—and he thought for a brief moment of catching, killing, but the thought passed.

If the sign by the road had been right—and 50/50 on that, really—he was 15 miles from the nearest town, a muddy shithole of a place called Riverbottom. _Might as well have called it Swamp Ass._ With a quiet road and no surprises, he should make the town before noon. Long before Jaskier was supposed to arrive. He could eat then, at the inn, before it filled.

Hefting himself to his feet, he sighed.

He hadn’t questioned it, he thought, as he packed up his little camp with steady, careful hands. Not even once. Jaskier had announced that he was going to take a detour through the south of Aedeirn, and that he would meet Geralt here on the day and time of his convenience. And Geralt had not so much as agreed as accepted this as an inexorable fixture of his existence. _Leather in the palm of his glove, too thin. Due for a replacement._

He should have said something, pretended to argue, acted like he had better places to be.

And he did. Geralt had a standing summons to the court of Redania that he was steadfastly ignoring, and word of a Wyvern clutch farther north. If anyone asked, he was getting to it. But there were enough drowners and kikimoras this way to keep him busy, and if Jaskier had business to attend to, well, then he would—

He wasn’t waiting for him, he caught himself, tightening Roach’s cinch. That would be wandering from the Path, a distraction. This was just… arranging his schedule efficiently. Besides, he missed—

He preferred—

He _didn’t mind_ having the bard around.

“Can’t let him in on that one, can we?” he said to Roach, as he swung into the saddle. “Never hear the end of it.”

She snorted, and heaved once before responding to his nudge forwards. He took that as tacit agreement, and did not pursue the matter further. Roach was an excellent conversationalist.

~

Geralt smelled the bard before he saw him, before he ever pushed open the door to the tavern. Over the mixed scents of piss and sweat, burnt stew, bad alcohol, and the lingering flavor of sex, he would know the lilting notes of eager honeysuckle anywhere. The sweat trapped in ridiculous clothes that didn’t breathe and were not for travel, despite Jaskier’s insistence to the contrary, and a lingering, nearly-imperceptible sweetness that hung around him like a cloud of miasma.

(Jaskier claimed it was perfume, but it reminded Geralt strongly of a certain weed he knew that grew exclusively in cow patties. Not at all unpleasant, when removed from its source.)

The door swung open with a bang, and a brightly-dressed eyesore took a sweeping lunge into the entry.

“Good afternoon, Riverbottom!”, announced Jaskier, to the room at large, “Who’s ready for a song fit to make the sirens weep with jealousy? Or to heal the heart with hearty laughter? Well you are in luck!”

He bowed, deeply, and one person in the back of the inn clapped in what could have been a sarcastic fashion. Most patrons looked slightly put-upon if nothing else.

“But, in a moment, in the briefest of brief moments, my adoring public.”

Without waiting for a response to this deluge of information, positive or negative, he signaled for an ale as he scanned the room with darting eyes. Anxious, eager, even for him.

Tucked away in the darkest corner, Geralt almost smiled, but stopped the reflexive gesture with a mouthful of warm bread. _Hot, fresh, wheat over-ground._

“Ah, there he is. The White Wolf himself!”

Jaskier slid in across from him, lute half off his back before the door had even swung shut behind him. His fingers trembled as he held them flat against the table, Geralt noticed, and that was enough for him to look up without prodding, for once.

“Just like old times, eh? You, me, a bite of stew, a mouthful of wine, an evening of possibilities.”

“Hmm.”

Geralt sniffed. Sweat. Honey-sweet balm. Stale horseshit. Nothing out of the ordinary. _And yet._

“How is my favorite monster-hunter?”

Geralt glared.

“I am the only monster-hunter you know.”

“You wish! I have made many illustrious connections in my time on the earth.”

“Which is so prodigious.”

“Geralt!” The bard’s voice squeaked up an octave. “Are you insinuating that I am—are you calling me young?!”

Geralt quirked an eyebrow, letting Jaskier draw his own conclusions, while watching the other man’s face intently for signs of unease. It was something he did regularly—killing things and people for a living made you unavoidably wary—but the bard was like a shimmering pool, reflecting everything around him, revealing very little. Hard to read, sometimes.

“I am so offended,” said Jaskier, uncharacteristically choosing to let the matter slide as he commandeered a hunk of Geralt’s bread.

“So, what’s new in your witchery world of… weirdness?”

 _Ah, there it is._ The bard’s heartbeat had picked up speed, pattering too swiftly, the way it did when he lied, or when his gaze lighted on an appealing woman, or when backed up against the wall by an enterprising beggar. Geralt fixed him with a look.

“What’s wrong?”

“What? Wrong? Me? Nothing’s ever been wrong with me in my life? Why would you even ask such a thing?”

Geralt glared at him, and he finished, awkwardly.

“Well, there is something I’ve been wanting to ask you. Or tell you, I guess, not much asking involved, is there? Should be one-and-done, nice and neat.” He mimed a scissoring motion and laughed as though this constituted the punchline of a remarkably clever joke, which Geralt alone did not get.

“Jaskier.”

The word left his mouth like a throat being cut. Harsh. Too quick. But the bard did not look up again.

“Can we—” he stuttered out, and Geralt could hear his heart racing ever faster, as if it might burst, and he could hear the bard’s breath shortening, “could we go somewhere more private?”

“Hmm.”

~

In the dark of Geralt’s dingy room, the air was too thick, and it hung uncomfortably between them. He sniffed. Air still acrid with it, bitter like a fouled bog. He decided he did not like it, this was not the way a bard ought to smell, especially not his—this bard.

“Spit it out.”

Jaskier faced the bed, not looking at him, gazing up at the room’s one small window. His arms crossed and uncrossed, the violet silk of his doublet slipping against itself. A soft, familiar sound.

“Geralt. Well. You see. It’s like this…”

He trailed off, visibly sweating, and then took a deep breath and continued, still not turning.

“I like you. I like you very much, you’re excellent company even when you’re not talking to me, you’re a wizard with those swords, I mean look at those muscles—and I have come to have feelings for, and about you, in your general direction.”

He waved his hand indiscriminately in the air, not at all in his general direction, and Geralt blinked.

“More,” Jaskier continued, “Than I think you would be perhaps comfortable with. I like you, more than is good for me, I should say. I didn’t want to just keep it to myself because that would be _lying_ , but I certainly wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable, and please don’t feel obligated to do anything other than tell me to shut up and oh Melitele Geralt please say something.”

Geralt blinked again.

He said nothing, utterly fixated on the reactions of Jaskier’s body to whatever was coming out of his mouth. He panted, sweating and smelling of fear and as if his very life hung on the words leaving his mouth. As if this was the first time he’d passionately declared his affection for something or someone, when Geralt knew for a fact he did at least 27 times a day. Humans never ceased to amaze him, and he almost laughed.

Jaskier turned around, finally, his face stricken, and the levity left him at once.

“I understand if you want me to leave. I won’t trouble you anymore.”

“You don’t trouble me,” said Geralt, without thinking.

“Then you don’t… mind?”

Geralt rolled that around in his mind for a moment. The bard liked him. Seemed self-conscious about that, afraid of rejection, even. While he knew he pushed the bard around more than was strictly necessary, he hadn’t thought the man so sensitive as all that.

“I don’t mind.”

Jaskier shifted from one foot to the other, looking as if he wanted to ask something else, but after a moment he seemed to think better of it. His heart rate had dropped down considerably, and this pleased Geralt, though he couldn’t think why. He just didn’t want to see the bard unhappy.

“Is that all this was about?”

Jaskier nodded, big blue eyes dipping down shyly.

Geralt hummed, still confused but content that Jaskier seemed to have relaxed. Pity he felt the need to stress so about his friendships, no wonder he tagged after a witcher, of all people. Perhaps he could stand to be gentler to him.

“I have a contract. Swamp. You can come to the edge of the swamp, but no further.”

Jaskier laughed, his mouth wide open as if grateful to have something to do. A little panic still crept at the edges of his eyes.

“What? The great and safety conscious-Geralt inviting me on a hunt? This is truly a first. That alone ought to be written into legend, a ballad about the great wolf softening in his old age—”

He clapped his hands together, and leapt to the door handle before Geralt could reach for it. A droplet of sweat landed on the inside of Geralt’s wrist, and he inhaled very slightly to catch the scent of him. Sweet again, softer, as he ought to be. _Better._

“What rhymes with ‘hag’, Geralt? Bag, baggage? Cabbage? Has to work with the new Oxenfurt schema, which is ever so tricky—”

Deeming the important part of the conversation over, Geralt tuned out the noise, and focused instead on the steps creaking under his feet as they went back down to lunch. _Need to replace the joining on those soon._

Jaskier’s pleasant patter of conversation that did not require his participation spooled on and on, and another man might have smiled at it.

He sniffed. Lunch on the fire. Hmm.

_Rabbit._

**Author's Note:**

> Show-Geralt absolutely does not even think about his feelings. What's an emotion? Never heard of it.


End file.
